ET-10 A Profile of Minority Business Owners

Business ownership has long been regarded as a source of job creation and economic growth. It has also been symbolized as an important and viable alterna-tive for those who are unable to find a suitable position in the traditional job market. Business ownership allows individuals to acquire monetary returns relative to initia-tive, skills, and risk-taking, thus facilitating economic and upward mobility. This is especially true for minor-ity and immigrant groups who are marginalized by the traditional labor force—business ownership represents an important independent means by which to simultane-ously earn a livelihood and to achieve economic parity. Self-employed immigrants are found to do substantially better in the labor market than salaried immigrants, and businesses owned by immigrant groups are also very successful, with higher incomes and employment than native-owned businesses. Immigrants constitute 12.2 percent of the total work force in the United States and own a large share of busi-nesses in the lowest- and highest-skill sectors and in several industries, an indication that their contributions differ across sectors of the economy. Immigrants also make up a sizeable portion of the businesses owned and business income generated in the US; nearly 1.5 million business owners represent 12.5 percent of all business owners, generating $67 billion, 11.6 percent of all business income. Business ownership is geographi-cally concentrated in a few states. Nearly 30 percent of all the business owners in California, one-fourth of those in New York, and more than one-fifth of those in New Jersey, Florida, and Hawai‘i are immigrants. The main source countries of immigrant busines